HONG KONG—Hong Kong’s oldest television broadcaster, once a cultural mainstay, is on the verge of collapse after battling financial woes and a growing disconnect with local viewers for years.

For the second time in three months, Asia Television Ltd. held back paying salaries to its over 700 employees, and on Tuesday paid just half their November wages. The station, better known as ATV, promised to pay the balance soon, but said that the payout of December salaries was uncertain.

The government has threatened to take legal action against ATV for violating labor laws while some of its news department staff plan to walk off their jobs on Jan. 1 if they aren’t paid. This could potentially disrupt news programming at ATV and violate its broadcast license.

ATV, launched in 1957 as Rediffusion Television, is one of Hong Kong’s two free-to-air TV stations. It brought international programming to the city, and launched the careers of several famous actors.

Yet there are no sympathetic calls among the city’s public to help save the local institution, which in recent years has lost most of its programming power and cultural cache, as it instead targets mainland Chinese viewers. ATV’s signal reaches many parts of neighboring Guangdong Province.

Variety shows and advertising in Mandarin Chinese for products unavailable in Hong Kong lead many to believe ATV has grown steadily out of touch with local viewers. ATV mainly broadcasts in Cantonese, which is Hong Kong’s main Chinese dialect, as well as English.

Protesters rally against the government's decision to not award a free-to-air broadcast license to Hong Kong Television in 2013. The refusal to grant HKTV a license intensified the public's dissatisfaction over Asia Television, which is on the verge of collapse.
Reuters

“We can see talk shows on ATV narrating viewpoints that are definitely not those of the local people,” says
Anthony Fung,
professor of journalism and communications at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

“The last time I felt ATV was a part of popular culture was maybe 15 years ago,” he said.

The frustration over Hong Kong’s airwaves comes on the heels of the recent pro-democracy protests, which highlighted deep dissatisfaction with increased mainland Chinese presence and Beijing’s reach into the city.

Rather than produce new shows, ATV mostly airs reruns of decades-old dramas. In 2011, it inaccurately reported the death of former Chinese President
Jiang Zemin,
incurring a 300,000 Hong Kong dollar (US$38,600) fine by Hong Kong authorities for the error.

Some of the public’s dissatisfaction over ATV intensified after the government’s refusal last year to grant a broadcast license to upstart
Hong Kong Television Network Ltd.
, a move seen by some analysts to protect incumbents like ATV, which toes a more pro-Beijing line in its news and other programming.

HKTV’s slick programming, in contrast to ATV’s, targets younger viewers. HKTV, which launched in November as an Internet streaming service, produces shows that tackle more controversial social and political topics the mainstream stations generally avoid.

At the heart of ATV’s problems is a dispute among shareholders, as well as criticisms of mismanagement of the station, which led the Hong Kong Communications Authority to advise the government against renewing ATV’s free-to-air license when it expires in 2015. The station is now seeking buyers to rescue the company.

“We are still talking to a number of potential investors that have expressed intense interest,” ATV Executive Director Ip Ka-po said Tuesday. “I believe ATV, with its free-to-air license, is very attractive,” he said.

Ownership of ATV changed hands numerous times as the privately held station struggled to boost viewership and profits even as its ratings have been eclipsed for decades by dominant broadcaster Television Broadcasts Ltd.

ATV sought innovative ways to boost ratings, such as producing a local version of the highly popular program “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” in 2001, as well as focusing on lower-budget infotainment programming.